Monthly Archives: October 2019

Time For A Bit Of A Change (or Getting Chopped)

Posted on October 3, 2019 | Comments Off on Time For A Bit Of A Change (or Getting Chopped)

My hair has been the same way for a while. I have been dyeing it the same color for several years, and I think the last big change I made to it was when I got bangs. I’ve been growing my hair out for a few years, and while I haven’t let it get crazy long, it’s been long for quite a while. Whenever I would get my hair done (which is not as often as I should), it was mainly just a trim to get the shape back in my hair. I would have maybe an inch or two cut off because of the growth since the last cut, but that’s it.

I used to love to change my hair up more often. But now, because every major change to my hair requires me to get new headshots and spend more money, I rarely do it. But before I had my hair cut earlier this week, I decided that it was time for a change. I loved my long hair, but it wasn’t looking as professional and styled as I would like. I have very thin hair and get bald spots from alopecia, so the long hair was starting to look a bit stringy. And I had recently lost a big chunk of my hair (fortunately it was at the back of my hairline so it’s not too noticeable) so I wanted to make sure I had a new hairstyle that would cover that hair loss.

There are so many styles I would love to have with my hair, but they don’t work with my face or how my face looks right now. I think if I was thinner, some looks would be better on me. I hate that my weight changes what I feel like I can do with my hair, but it’s just the truth. But I was looking at a few different things that I thought could look good and decided to show them to my friend Erin, who does my hair, to see what she thought would work and look good for me.

And the first thing I showed her was similar to a collarbone length bob (I guess it’s technically a lob but those seem to be a bit shorter than what I was looking at). Erin thought it would look great and help create the illusion that my hair is fuller than it really is. So I decided to go for it and make the first major change to my hair in years.

Since I also needed my hair to be dyed (not only do I not love my natural color, but I’ve been going gray since I was 20 so I need to cover those grays up), we started with the dyeing. But because there is no point in coloring hair that was just going to be chopped off, Erin first cut off about 6 inches that we knew would be gone. It was just a cut to get a bulk of what was going to be cut off gone, but it was still a big cut and I was excited to see how much was coming off!

You can even tell in that picture how stringy the bottom of my hair was getting. Long hair is awesome, but I just don’t have enough hair to make it look good (maybe I’ll do long hair when I can get extensions to add some thickness one day).

Dyeing my hair is a pretty standard thing for me now. I’ve been doing it forever. I did notice one random benefit to having gray hair, though. I get a single process, all-over color, but because of the gray hair, it does look like my hair gets highlighted. It’s not as perfect compared to when I actually get it highlighted, but it at least adds a bit of dimension to my hair color.

Since a lot of the cutting was done before it was dyed, after the dye was washed out it was just perfecting the cut. Erin has been doing my hair for 16 years now so she knows what works for me and my hair. And while there were a few ideas she had that could be nice, she went with what she knew would look the best on me and that I could style. And when it was done, I had much shorter hair even though it still is technically long!

I wish I had worn a lighter shirt when I took those photos because you can’t see my hair that well. But I took another after photo in a tank top so I could show off how short it is now.

It’s not short, but it’s a decent change from what it was before. I love my new look and it hasn’t been a huge adjustment. My biggest concern with shorter hair is being able to put it up for my workouts, but it’s still long enough to pull back into a bun. And it looks so much better than it did before. I guess it looks fuller now, but since I’m so aware of my hair I don’t see that. But it does look much healthier and polished, which is something I wanted.

Now that I have a new look, I do have to get new headshots, but that was already something I was working on. And since my hair is at least the same color, I’m not as stressed about getting my headshots done immediately. My plan is to do them this month, but in the past, I was worried about doing them the same week as a major haircut. I have other things taking up my time next week, but I know I’ll get it done soon.

I’m so glad I took a chance on changing up my look because I needed it! This was just the refresh I needed to feel better and I have a lot of confidence about my hair now!

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Default ThumbnailGetting A New Look (or Two Attempts To Dye My Hair) Default ThumbnailAlmost Deja Vu (or Not My Usual Hair Appointment) Default ThumbnailDoing Some Beautification (or Feeling Better From The Outside In) Default ThumbnailAt Home Hair (or I Haven’t Done This Since I Was A Teenager) Default ThumbnailContinuing To Get Back To Me (I Needed My Hair Done!) Default ThumbnailFeeling Refreshed (or Looking Good While Babysitting)

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Posted in Beauty, Fun Stuff

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Refocusing And Getting Back To Me (or Doing A Bit Of The Same This Month)

Posted on October 2, 2019 | Comments Off on Refocusing And Getting Back To Me (or Doing A Bit Of The Same This Month)

Last month, my monthly challenge was to reset myself. I had been dealing with so much in my life over the summer and I really needed to get back to me. I felt like I was not in the best mental space and I was feeling the effects physically too. I knew I needed to get back to myself and figure out how to make it work again.

I did my best with the challenge. Where I had the most success was getting my sleep back on track. There were still some nights where I was up too late or didn’t get a lot of sleep (like the night before my Dri-Tri), but in general, I was doing much better last month with my sleep. I was getting to bed closer to the time that I knew I needed to and I wasn’t as tired when I woke up. I know I should feel lucky that my sleep issues didn’t include oversleeping, but when I was staying up late and had the chance to sleep in, it would have been nice if I could do that. But I guess it was better that I only had to work on my bedtime when I was working on myself.

I didn’t make as much progress in working on my food or self-care practices. Food is always going to be a struggle for me, I know that. But I wanted to do a little better and be a bit more structured. I think the structure is improving and I am not having extreme hunger issues, but the quality of what I’m eating needs to be worked on (like it always does). And my self-care did improve a bit with making time for myself. But I always wanted to work on self-care practices for my skin and appearance. That is still not back to my normal routine yet, but I have worked on some of it and I’m slowly getting back to what I know makes my skin look better and makes me happy.

After spending last month working on refocusing and getting back to my normal self, I realized that there are other places I need to refocus in my life as well. And the biggest one is my acting career. Lately, it has felt like I have been doing so much for my career because of all my work with the election. But that doesn’t help my career directly. I still work on self-submitting every day and networking when I can, but there is more that I can do and I haven’t been doing it.

Some of the things I should be doing are things I can’t do because of money issues. I’d love to be in an on-going acting class and I haven’t found one that fits what I’m looking for and my budget. But I want to keep looking to see if I can find the perfect class for me. And I know I need new headshots, but those aren’t cheap (or if you do them cheaply, they don’t usually look good). But I have been saving for those and I am going to try to find a way to get them done soon.

So this month, I want to work on refocusing myself on my acting career. I want to make some good steps forward with things that I can control. I have a lot working in my favor, and I just need to make the effort to take advantage of them. But I don’t always know what the path is to do that and I can work on figuring that out without spending money. I don’t have any specifics on what I want to do this month (I know, another abstract challenge), but I have some ideas of things I can do or focus on. And while I doubt I will see results with auditions or bookings within the month, doing these things are going to be setting me up for those in the future.

It’s so easy to call yourself an actor because you don’t have to prove that you are doing anything. I know that I’m not just claiming to be an actor, but I also know there is so much more I can do for my career while I am not fully living as an actor. And this month, I want to add more of those things into my life and see where it takes me. I can only benefit from doing this, so it will be worth challenging myself and seeing what’s possible.

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Default ThumbnailRecapping A Few Challenges From Last Month (or Getting Ready Stop Going Easy On Myself) Default ThumbnailI’ve Been Slacking (or I Need An Easy Challenge This Month) Default ThumbnailIs This A Year Of Being Selfish? (or A Month Of Saying No) Default ThumbnailNot Perfect This Month (or Challenged With The Monthly Challenge) Default ThumbnailA Challenge For A Weird Month (or French And Deep Breaths) Default ThumbnailTaking A Month To Reset (or This Doesn’t Really Feel Like A Monthly Challenge)

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Posted in Acting, Fun Stuff, Health

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Learning Something New Every Time (or Being Ok With My Dri-Tri)

Posted on October 1, 2019 | Comments Off on Learning Something New Every Time (or Being Ok With My Dri-Tri)

I’ve done the Dri–Tri multiple times over the years. And I feel like every time I do it, there is a new lesson or challenge that I learn. My first Dri-Tri was a huge learning experience. I had no idea how to pace myself for it and I really messed up by going too hard on the rower. I’ve worked on improving that every time since. I also learned lessons with how to modify the floor work and how to split things up to make things easiest on me (it’s still hard, but it helps when I split some exercises into smaller intervals). And for cardio, I’ve learned so many lessons on the treadmill. And my last Dri-Tri was the first for me on the bike so that was another new experience.

So when I was getting ready for my Dri-Tri this past weekend, I had all those lessons in mind. I remembered lots of things that I struggled with before and tried to keep those experiences in mind when I was thinking about my game plan. And I honestly did feel ready for it the day before. And then I made a dumb choice and went out the night before. I didn’t think I would be out that late, and it ended up being a much later night than I thought. And by the time I was home and in bed, I struggled to fall asleep. I maybe got 2 hours of sleep combined that night as little 20-30 minute bursts. It wasn’t good and it was a dumb decision to go out the night before. But I couldn’t do anything to change that before the Dri-Tri.

I did have work before going to Orangetheory and at least that wasn’t too stressful. And there was about an hour between work and the Dri-Tri so I used that time to relax and focus on what I wanted to do. I knew that being tired was going to affect how things went, but I really wanted to do just a little better than I did last time. My bigger goal was to be under 50 minutes again, but I wasn’t sure if that would be possible.

Well, I was right that I couldn’t do it in under 50 minutes. I didn’t even do better than I did the last time. It actually ended up being my slowest Dri-Tri time ever. And that was really frustrating for me. I tried so hard and it didn’t have the results I wanted it to have. But I also was aware that being so tired was working against me.

But despite having my slowest time ever, I did have some really good moments in the event. First, I finished. That’s awesome because not everyone can do the Dri-Tri. Being able to complete it is an accomplishment and I shouldn’t look down on that.

When we are doing the 2000-meter row, we are told to keep the stroke rate lower than we think it should be since it is such a long row. That has been something I have been working on since my first Dri-Tri and it is getting better for me each time. I try to zone out a bit during the row and just focus on not stressing about going faster. I’m usually able to stay steady with the stroke rate and that’s something that continued this time.

But we are also told to keep an eye on the 500-meter split time on the computer. That time moves based on how fast and how hard you row. And doing a long row usually means that the number will get higher (and it will take you longer to complete a 500-meter split). I have seen this happen in my rowing a lot and I hate how much fluctuation there is. I usually have a great split time for the first half or so, and then it gets much higher than I would like it to be. But for some reason this time, I was able to keep my split time within 1 second except the first few strokes and the last 150-meters. It was so steady that I wondered if the computer broke and it was stuck. But then I’d see it go down and back up 1 second and I knew that it was just me being able to keep it steady.

On the floor section of the Dri-Tri, there isn’t much I can do to change which exercises I can do. I modify things like being on my knees for the push-ups, using the bench for the plank jacks and burpees, and doing lunges instead of step-ups. I try to find new tricks that might help me, but there aren’t a lot of things I can try. What I did this time was split the lunges up differently so one side wasn’t getting as tired as it has in the past. I tried to just focus on each exercise at a time and not what was coming up next. And I didn’t pay attention to what people were doing next to me. I didn’t realize that I was the last one to finish the floor until I was walking to the bike.

Using the bike for the Dri-Tri is still a new thing for me and I’m still learning a lot. I knew this time that I wanted to not worry about the resistance levels and just set it to my base pace level. When I got on the bike, I was so tired and it felt like I would be on there forever. I also knew by the time I was on the bike that there was no way I would be doing better than my last Dri-Tri so I had that affecting my mood a bit. But I tried to not think too much about it because there was nothing I could do at that point to change that.

I was able to keep it at my base resistance level for about the first half of the bike challenge. But it was starting to get really hard and I was slowing down a lot. So I dropped the resistance level lower to make the bike easier on me. I wanted to pedal as fast as I could since that was going to help me get to the final distance more than the resistance levels would. I was breaking the bike portion down into small chunks and trying to celebrate whenever I finished another small chunk. And I tried to limit how often I took a sip of water since I have to stop pedaling to get my water. So each water break stopped my progress and I didn’t want to do that too much.

When I was done, I was so tired. I wanted to lay down and rest, but I knew that doing that wouldn’t be great for my body. So I sat down and worked on stretching for a while before getting back up to cheer on the people still finishing their 5K on the treadmills. It’s so important for me to cheer on the other finishers because I know what it feels like to not have the same amount of encouragement and cheering as people who were faster than me. And it’s awesome watching someone finish who might not have thought they could do it.

In the end, while I had a slow Dri-Tri and I didn’t accomplish what I wanted to, I still finished and had a great time. It’s a challenge that I look forward to doing, even if while I’m in the middle I wonder what I have done to myself. But every time I finish, it’s a great reminder of how much I have accomplished and how strong I have become. I’m already planning on doing the next Dri-Tri and seeing what new lessons I can take from this past one and apply it to the next. Maybe that one will finally get me back under 50 minutes.

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Default ThumbnailGetting Ready For The Dri-Tri (or Working My Way Through The Workouts) Default ThumbnailDri-Tri Prep Workouts (or The Beginning Of My Workout Week) Default ThumbnailMy First Dri-Tri Relay (or Trying To Not Be Disappointed In Myself) Default ThumbnailMy First Dri-Tri (or Beating My Expectations) Default ThumbnailDri-Tri Time (or Beating My Own Records) Default ThumbnailMaking Challenges More Challenging (or A Dri-Tri First For Me)

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Posted in Fitness

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